Meet the Korean CEO, who is in love with Hindi cinema, butter chicken, and believes that the India growth story presents a big opportunity for the global electronics corporation
JB Park, President and CEO of Samsung Electronics Southwest Asia Image: Madhu Kapparath
JB Park is candid. “Friend or foe is a very tricky question because a friend can become a foe or a foe can become a friend,” reckons the president and CEO of Samsung Electronics Southwest Asia. JB—as he is widely known among his colleagues and friends—came to India in December 2018 to head the mobile division, and last December he was elevated as the CEO. Into his fifth year in the country, JB has led from the front to reclaim the biggest smartphone billing from Xiaomi, and is now facing a close fight from another Chinese rival Vivo. He tells us what would happen if Vivo becomes bigger than Samsung in some quarters. “It would trigger something within me…like JB, you must do better,” he laughs. “That’s the adrenaline that keeps us moving,” he adds.
Park is unidimensional. “We only look at the consumer. They are the king,” he says in an exclusive interview with Forbes India. The South Korean biggie is obsessed with users and not worried about the pressure and stress that comes with keeping the crown. “Consumer are the thing that matters to us,” he says.
Park confesses his love for Hindi films. “I like Rajkummar Rao,” says the Korean honcho, who binged on Indian movies for eight months when he was staying in a hotel after landing in India. “I love masala dosa,” he smiles, adding that the latest film that he watched was ‘Meenaskhi Sundareshwar.’ “I feel very comfortable in dosa. It’s addictive,” he says. There is another cuisine that JB just can’t stop talking about: Butter chicken! “Order any dish from Punjab and North India and it iss good because you have so much butter in them,” he laughs. “What about beverages,” I ask, and the CEO continues to talk about his love affair. “I like tea in clay pots,” he says.
He is also an emotional person. “All Koreans are,” Park says. “We get emotional while watching a soccer game,” he says. A football match between Korea and Japan, JB points out, gets as emotional as a cricket match between India and Pakistan. “Like Indians, Koreans too like spicy food,” he says. Spicy food, the CEO lets on, makes your brain calm your stresses. “It also affects your emotions,” he says, adding that peninsula people like Italians and Koreans have a tendency of bursting out of anger. “We use a lot of body language,” says JB in a free-wheeling and exclusive interview. Excerpts:
Friend or foe is a very tricky question because a friend can become a foe or a foe can become a friend. Vivo, Oppo, OnePlus and Realme…they're all BBK [Chinese multinational conglomerate]. And then you have Huawei, and Xiaomi. So, these are three pillars in China. If you look at all the Chinese brands and Samsung, are we fighting in the market? Yes. We are with our products. But if you reverse it, we are also partners because all source components from us. So, is our technology helping them? Yes. And yes, we fight with the final product.